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William Faulkner takes on Woody Allen in 'Midnight in Paris' lawsuit

The owner of the rights to the works of William Faulkner, left, is suing over what it says is unfair use of a Faulkner quote in the Woody Allen film 'Midnight in Paris.'
(Photo by The Times-Picayune archive)

"Midnight in Paris" has a date in court. The owner of the rights to the works of writer William Faulkner has filed suit against the Oscar-winning film's distributor, Sony Pictures Classics, claiming that writer-director Woody Allen's 2011 flight of fancy used a famous quote from Faulkner's 1950 novel "Requiem for a Nun" without permission.

Specifically, the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday (Oct. 25) in U.S. District Court in Mississippi by Faulkner Literary Rights, claims copyright infringement and violation of the Lanham Act -- the primary trademark statute -- with regard to a line spoken by actor Owen Wilson's lead character.

Although the offending line from the film isn't a direct quote from "Requiem," it is close -- and it even cites Faulkner as its originator. In the film, Wilson says: "The past is not dead! Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party."

In "Requiem for a Nun," the passage -- one of Faulkner's most often quoted -- reads, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Sony had no immediate comment about the lawsuit, according to multiple online reports, but the trade publication Variety pointed out that a common defense for people who quote another author's work is that it "is transformative enough to qualify as a fair use, and that it falls into the category on commentary on the work."

Faulkner Literary Rights is seeking unspecified damages in the lawsuit.

"Midnight in Paris," the screenplay for which earned Allen his fourth Oscar in February, is a literary fantasy in which Wilson plays a successful Hollywood screenwriter whose visit to the French capital offers him the ultimate in inspiration -- but that also threatens to take him further from the woman he is about to marry.